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FRANCIS ASBURY

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES

BY

JUDGE HENRY WADE ROGERS

BISHOP JOSEPH F. BERRY

BISHOP FRANK M. BRISTOL

BISHOP FREDERICK D. LEETE

V 1.

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN
NEW YORK CINCINNATI

TiiE ;
PUBLIC Lii^rvARY

789077

Tli-DLN FOJNDaTIONS

'z^ 1917 *

Copyright, 1917, by
THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN

CONTENTS

Page

CENTENNIAL ADDRESS ON FRANCIS

ASBURY 5

Judge Henry Wade Rogers

THEN AND NOW 51

Bishop Joseph F. Berry

FRANCIS ASBURY— THE BISHOP 66

Bishop Frank M. Bristol

FRANCIS ASBURY— ITINERANT 90

Bishop Frederick D. Leete

CENTENNIAL ADDRESS

ON

FRANCIS ASBURY

Delivered before the New York East Conference
at Stamford,* Connecticut, on April 5, 1916, by
Judge Henry Wade Rogers, of the United States
Circuit Court of Appeals.

'Jesse Lee, in his History of the Methodists, speaking of the Con-
ference of 1789, says: " We had one new circuit in Connecticut called
Stamford, which was the first that was ever formed in that State or in
any of the New England States. It was my lot to go to that circuit
alone, and to labor by myself. Another preacher was appointed to
the circuit with me. but he failed and never came, and I had to labor
and suffer alone amongst a strange people."

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FRANCIS ASBURY

The centennial of the death of Francis
Asbury is a profoundly impressive event.
History has inscribed his name among the
greatest apostles of Christianity in ancient
or modern times. The Methodist Church
throughout the world pauses from its labors
to commemorate his life and service.

It has been said that the grandest thing,
next to the radiance that flows from the
throne of God, is the light of a noble and
beautiful life, shining in benediction upon
the destinies of men. We are assembled to
commemorate such a life shining in benedic-
tion upon the great church to which we be-
long. Monuments are not built, nor mau-
soleums erected, nor eulogies spoken, to
please the dead. No words which can be ut-
tered here can reach that mysterious realm in
which the spirit of Asbury dwells. Speech
is not for the dead but for the living, that
they may learn through great examples to
live as those who rendered service to human-
itv and to God.

8 FRANCIS ASBURY

The character of Washington stands forth
"alone hke some peak that has no fellow in
the mountain range of greatness." The
character of Asbury towers solitary and
alone in American Methodism, rising like a
great peak high above the mountain range.

Asbury was born in England on August
20, 1745, in the parish of Handsworth, four
miles from Birmingham. His parents were
poor, and at the age of fourteen he was in-
dentured to a maker of buckle chapes. His
school training was meager. He received
simply the rudiments of an education at the
village school, although the parish in which
he was born was hardly a day's ride from
Oxford. His school days were short and
quite unpleasant. The school was unendur-
able to him because of the cruelty of the
teacher. It filled Asbury with such a hor-
rible dread that with him anything was pref-
erable to going to school. This deficiency
of school training later became a source of
great affliction to him. He refers to it in his
Journal. "While I was a traveling preacher
in England," he writes, "I was much
tempted, finding myself exceedingly igno-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 9

rant of almost everything a minister of the
gospel ought to know." The schools gave
him little more than the power to read and
write and cipher. But what he lacked in this
respect he labored in his subsequent years to
supply. It was his custom as he traveled his
circuits to ride with his book open before him.
He thus made himself master of much sound
learning. He attained a knowledge of He-
brew and Latin and Greek. He studied the
Old and the New Testament in the lan-
guages in which they were written.

Seminaries and colleges in this country
were few in number. Washington himself,
rich and an aristocrat, only had a common
school education. It is not at all surprising,
therefore, that all the early Methodist
bishops were, like Asbury, self -trained men.
Whatcoat at the age of thirteen was ap-
prenticed to a trade. McKendree's educa-
tional advantages were also very limited, and
his lack of early culture often embarrassed
him. The schools gave little to Enoch
George, and nothing to Roberts save the
simplest elements. The educational oppor-
tunities of Elijah Hedding were also small.

10 FRANCIS ASBURY

Joshua Soule and Beverly Waugh were
boys of the backwoods and received such
school training as the backwoods afforded.
And Thomas A. Morris had school advan-
tages of the most meager character. John
Emory was the only one of the earlier bishops
whose training was liberal according to the
standards of his time. He was a graduate of
Washington College in Maryland, had stud-
ied law and been admitted to the bar. But
all these men had peculiar force and energy
of character. They were without exception
men of consecration and moral and intellec-
tual power. They possessed marked ability
and rendered effective service. Some of them
were eloquent and brilliant preachers. Sub-
sequent reading, observation, and study sup-
plied the deficiencies of their earlier training.
I think no one of them equaled Asbury in his
scholastic attainments.

When the prophet Samuel went forth to
anoint a successor to Saul he had the children
of Jesse pass before him, and the prophet
said unto Jesse, "The I.ord hath not chosen
these." And then Samuel said unto Jesse,
"Are here all thv children ?" Jesse answered.

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 11

"There remaineth 3^et the youngest." Sam-
uel said, "Send and fetch hmi." Jesse did as
he was bidden, and sent and brought David
in, and he was goodly to look upon, and the
Lord said, "This is he." Then Samuel took
the horn of oil and anointed David in the
midst of his brethren; and the spirit of the
Lord came upon him from that day forward.
At Bristol, in England, on a day in Au-
gust, 1771, John Wesley was holding Con-
ference. He called for volunteers for the
work in America. A number volunteered
and passed in review before him. Asbury
was one of them, and he chose him to be his
"assistant" in America. The title implied
the general superintendence of the work in
this country, although Asbury, like David,
was the youngest man. At the time of his
appointment he was twenty-six years of age.
But the spirit of the Lord was upon him as
it was upon David from that day forth. Be-
fore the Conference assembled he had been
thinking for a half a year that perhaps it was
liis duty to go to America. He had laid the
matter before the Lord, being unwilling to
do his own will or to run before he was sent.

12 FRANCIS ASBURY

During this time his trials had heen very
great, which he thought the Lord permitted
to prove and tiy him in order to prepare him
for future usefulness. When he went to the
Bristol Conference he had, he said, not one
penny of money; but the Lord soon opened
the hearts of friends who supplied him with
clothes and ten pounds. After it was decided
that he was to go to America, he went home
to acquaint his parents with his great under-
taking, which he opened in as gentle manner
as possible. Though it was grievous to flesh
and blood, they consented to let him, their
only surviving child, undertake the work be-
yond the sea. They never were to see each
other again, for Asbury was kept so busy in
America that he could never find time for a
journey back to the home from whence he
came. What would have happened if his
parents had not consented to his departure
is not doubtful. "He that loveth father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me."
In a letter to his mother he writes: "As for
me, I know what I am called to ; it is to give
up all. . . . Let others condemn me as
being without natural affection, stubborn,

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 13

disobedient to parents, or what they will. It
does not alter the case. It is a small matter
to be judged of men." In his heart, however,
filial love was strong and tender. In one of
his letters to his father, after he had been in
America for years, he wrote: "I last even-
ing made arrangements for a remittance to
you. . . . My salary is sixty-four dollars ;
I have sold my watch and library, and will
sell my shirts before you should want. . . .
Your son Francis is a man of honor and con-
science. As my father and mother never dis-
graced me by an act of dishonesty, I hope to
echo back the same sound of an upright man.
I am well satisfied that the Lord saw fit that
you should be my parents rather than the
king or queen or any of the great."

Throughout the American Revolution
Wesley was much concerned over the rela-
tions between the colonies and Great Brit-
ain. Before open hostilities began he
stated in print that he did not defend the
measures which had been taken with regard
to America, and that he doubted whether
any man could defend them. He advised
the Methodists to vote for candidates who

14 FRANCIS ASIUTHY

favored conciliation with America. He
warned the advisers of the Crown that
the people of America were oppressed;
that they were asking for nothing more
than their legal rights. He said they
were "enthusiasts of liberty," contending for
liearth and altar and for wife and children.
He implored the prime minister, for God's
sake and the king's, not to permit his sov-
ereign to walk in the way of Rehoboam and
of Charles the First. In 1775 he sent his
preachers in America excellent advice. He
wi'ote them: "You were never in your lives
in so critical a situation as you are at this
time. It is your part to be peacemakers;
to be loving and tender to all, but to addict
yourselves to no party. . . . Say not one
word against one or the other side." Later
he changed his views. So pronounced was his
devotion to George the Third that it was said
that England never had a more loyal subject
than John Wesley. In the summer of 1775
he issued what he entitled "A Calm Address
to our American Colonies." It was sold for a
penny and was bought by forty thousand
purchasers who were amazed to find that it

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 15

was simply an abbreviated version of Dr.
Johnson's pamphlet on "Taxation No Tyr-
anny," which had been published in the
spring of the same year. People were
amazed at Wesley's changed attitude, as up
to that time he had publicly sympathized
with the colonists. Wesley declared that he
himself would no more continue in fellowship
with Methodists who hated the king and
Lord North than with Sabbath-breakers,
thieves, or drunkards, or common swearers.
This he declared in an address issued in 1777.
He stated in that address that after bawling
for liberty no liberty was left in America.
That the lords of Congress were as absolute
as the emperor of Morocco, while in England
the fullest liberty was enjoyed.

Wesle3''s "Calm Address" made trouble
for him at home, and it also made trouble for
his preachers in America. Copies of the ad-
dress got into the hands of our countrymen.
The result was that until the war was near its
end a Methodist preacher was an object of
suspicion and distrust. The position of the
English preachers Wesley had sent over was
one of actual peril. In some of the colonies

16 FRANCIS ASBURY

oaths of allegiance were prescribed to be ad-
ministered to all doubtful persons. The oath
was to take up arms in aid of the colonies if
called to do so by the colonial authorities.
The English itinerants were unwilling to
take the oath, and all but Asbury returned to
England. He remained at his post. Wesley
was severely censured for his utterances and
was accused of having turned politician.
The Methodists were thrown into a "fever of
excitement." Wesley's attitude and the
withdrawal of the English preachers from
the country might easily have ended Amer-
ican Methodism, and would have done so but
for Asbury. In his Journal, under date of
March 19, 1776, Asbury wrote that he had
received an affectionate letter from Mr.
Wesley, and added that he was truly sorry
that that venerable man had ever dipped
into the politics of America. "My desire,"
writes Asbury, "is to live in love and peace
with all men ; to do them no harm but all the
good I can. However, it discovers Mr. Wes-
ley's conscientious attachment to the govern-
ment under which he lived. Had he been a
subject of America, no doubt but he would

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 17

have been as zealous an advocate of the
American cause. But some inconsiderate
persons have taken occasion to censure the
Methodists in America on account of Mr.
Wesley's political sentiments."

When Rankin, who had been sent over by
Wesley, found how the war spirit dominated
the colonists, he was unwilling to remain.
He could not reconcile the American spirit
with his sense of loyalty, and so wrote As-
bury that he was going to return. Asbury's
reply deserves our gratitude. It follows :

"I can by no means leave such a field for
gathering souls to Christ as we have in
America. It would be an everlasting dis-
honor to the Methodists that we should all
leave three thousand souls who desire to
commit themselves to our care; neither is it
the part of a good shepherd to leave his flock
in time of danger ; therefore I am determined
by the grace of God not to leave them, let the
consequence be what it may."

I may add that the war was a grief to his
soul. The righteous, he writes, are blessed
with a pacific spirit and are bound for a
kingdom of peace, where

18 FRANCIS ASBURY

"No horrid alarum of war

Shall break our eternal repose;
No sound of the trumpet is there
Where the spirit of Jesus o'erflows."

Asbury never formally renounced his alle-
giance to the British government, and died a
British subject. But he was thoroughly
American in all his views and feelings.

Among the earliest of American ecclesias-
tical problems was that which for more than
a hundred years vexed and embarrassed the
Anglican Church throughout the colonies,
and which very considerably troubled the
Methodists. Bishops were needed to ordain
and supervise the preachers. The English
bishops deplored what they called the spir-
itual desolation of America, but they per-
sistently refused to consecrate an American
bishop. The reason was not wholl}^ ecclesias-
tical. It was much more political. The
Anglican Church was a state church, and the
king was opposed to an American episcopate,
lest he give offense to the dissenters through-
out the colonies. Samuel Adams and the
Congregationalists and Presbyterians were
also dreading lest England should attempt

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 19

to impose upon them an episcopacy. The
king knew any attempt of that sort would
l)e deeply resented. The English Church,
therefore, had persistently refused to comply
with the demand which almost from the first
settlement of the country the Episcopalians
of America had continuously made for an
American episcopate. As one of the Epis-
copal bishops has said, the wonder was while
this controversy raged that the gates of hell
did not prevail against the church. It is not
to be wondered at, therefore, that when Wes-
ley besought the Archbishop of Canterbury
to consecrate a bishop for the Methodists in
America his request was promptly denied.
Wesley was a High Churchman, but he had
strong convictions on this subject, and so in
1784, at Bristol, in a private room, he laid his
hands in ordination on Coke and set him
apart as superintendent of the Methodist
churches in America. Coke came to the
United States bringing a letter from Wesley
stating that he and Asbury were joint su-
perintendents. A General Conference was
called to meet in Baltimore on December 25,
1784. When it assembled, it decided to form

20 FRANCIS ASEURY

a distinct and separate church, and, upon the
suggestion of John Dickins, it was unani-
mously resolved that it should be called the
Metliodist Episcopal Church. They next
declared the office of general superintendent
elective. This done, they by a unanimous
vote elected Thomas Coke and Francis
Asbury general superintendents. At that
time Asbury was still an unordained
preacher and had never administered the
ordinances of the church. Along with the
rest of the Methodist preachers, he was ac-
customed up to that time to receive the sacra-
ment at the hands of Episcopal ministers.
He was thirty-nine years of age, and had
been preaching in America for thirteen
years. After his election as general superin-
tendent he was privately ordained deacon
and on the next day publicly ordained an
elder. After their consecration they soon
called themselves "bishops," for which they
were rebuked by Wesley, but without effect.
Asbury was now a bishop.

"The rude and storm-vexed times required
A pilot formed by nature to command."

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 21

Upon such a man the choice had fallen.

He was the first bishop of the Methodist
Episcopal Church ordained in the United
States. Coke never identified himself ex-
clusively with American Methodism and
after a time returned to England. Asbury
is regarded as the pioneer bishop of Method-
ism. He was more, for he was the first
bishop of any church consecrated on Amer-
ican soil. In 1783, however, a little company
of ten out of fourteen Episcopal ministers
met in solemn conclave in a rude and lonely
cottage in the small town of Woodbury in
Connecticut. They chose Samuel Seabury
to be their bishop and at their request he went
to England to seek consecration. The arch-
bishop and bishops of England declined to
consecrate him. The war was over, but the
king was still unwilling that a bishop should
be consecrated for America who came with
no credentials from the authorities of the
state. And so it was that Seabury, rejected
in London, went over to Aberdeen, and in
November, 1784, a few weeks before the con-
secration of Asbury, was consecrated in an
upper room in the rector}' of the proscribed

22 FKANCIS ASimilY

and persecuted Episcopal Church of Scot-
land. The consecration of these two men
closes one of the most interesting chapters in
American ecclesiastical history. Seabury
was a graduate of Yale, and had studied
medicine and theology in Scotland, and be-
fore he was chosen bishop had had the degree
of Doctor of Divinit}^ conferred upon him by
Oxford Universit3\ As a scholar he was
Asbury's superior. But in piety, zeal, and
labor and consecration, and in effective serv-
ice, no man was superior to Francis Asbury.
Five years later, in 1789, John Carroll, of
Baltimore, a graduate of a Jesuit College in
Brussels and the cousin of Charles Carroll,
the richest man in America, was appointed
the first Roman Catholic bishop of the
United States.

' Asbury was commanding in appearance,
although in stature he was only five feet and
nine inches tall. He weighed one hundred
and fifty pounds. His features were rugged,
his face furrowed deep with wrinkles. His
nose was prominent, his mouth large. His
eyes were of a bluish cast, and are said to
have been so piercing that it seemed to those

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 23

upon whom he fixed his glance as if he were
reading their inmost thoughts. His voice
was full-toned, clear, and under perfect con-
trol. At times it sounded in tones of thunder
that caused the bravest to shudder and the
most profligate to tremble. Again it was so
full of tender pathos that all eyes filled with
tears. As became his office and calling and
according to the fashion of the times, he wore
knee breeches, and sometimes silver shoe
buckles, and a single-breasted frock coat but-
toned to the throat. Trousers began to be
worn about the time Mr. Jefferson became
President, but Asbury would have none of
them, and never became reconciled to the
innovation. He had little patience and very
unhappy moments when preachers appeared
before him clad in what he regarded as a
modern abomination. He wore a broad-
brimmed hat with a very low crown, and his
costume much resembled that worn by the
Quakers. In preaching he continued for
years to wear the black gown, cassock, and
band which he wore in England, and which
Wesley always wore. It was some time after
his Episcopal ordination that he consented to

24 FRANCIS ASBURY

lay them aside. Jesse Lee had seriously ob-
jected to their use and was grieved with As-
bury. He thought plainness of dress and
simplicity of manner Avould make it easier to
reach the common people. In the changed
conditions of the life of to-day Methodist
preachers might well resume the gown that
Asbury and Whatcoat laid aside.

No man could be in Asbury's presence
without being impressed with profound re-
spect. His natural dignity and the greatness
of his character distinguished him among
men. He was gifted with fine conversational
powers, and possessed a cheerful humor. He
had a social charm that made him a welcome
guest in every social circle. But at times a
constitutional melancholy depressed him, due
no doubt to the bodily ills which continually
afflicted him.

Abel Stevens, in speaking of the early
Methodists in America, says : "Among these
pioneers, Asbury, by common consent, stood
first and chief. There was something in his
person, his eye, his mien, and in the music of
his voice which interested all who saw and
heard him. He possessed much natiu-al wit,

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 25

and was capable of the severest satire; but
grace and good sense so far predominated
that he never descended to anything beneath
the dignity of a man and a Christian minister.
In prayer he excelled. 'He prayed,' says
Garrettson, 'the best and prayed the most of
any man I ever knew.' "

"I purpose to rise at four o'clock," Asbury
writes in the Journal, "as often as I can and
spend two hours in prayer and meditation,
to take my room at eight and pray and medi-
tate an hour." "My desire is that prayer
should mix with eveiy thought, every word,
every action, that all might ascend as a holy,
acceptable sacrifice to God." Another time
he writes: "My present mode of conduct is
as follows : to read one hundred pages a day,
usually to pray in public five times a day, to
preach in the open air ever}^ other day, to lec-
ture in prayer meeting every evening." It
is said that whenever he ate he was accus-
tomed to kneel in prayer, and that he closed
the meal as he began it.

Asbury established in America the work of
the circuit riders. He believed tliat the life
and power of Methodism depended upon the

26 FRANCIS ASBURY

itinerancy. That feature of our polity was
disappearing at the time he arrived in Amer-
ica. If he liad not withstood the preachers,
the whole ^Methodist movement in the New
World would have soon ended. In those
times Methodism and a settled ministry were
incompatible. He was thoroughly grounded
in his belief that a Methodist j^reacher should
be as movable "as a soldier on the land or a
sailor on the sea." By keeping them in mo-
tion he kept them energetic. It was a wise
economy, good for the preachers and good
for the societies. It was a military drill for
the preachers, and it enabled the societies to
have the advantages of the varied gifts of
different preachers. The indisposition of the
preachers to travel much was a sore affliction
to him. I read from his Journal an entry he
made upon the subject: "I have not yet the
thing which I seek, a circulation of the
preachers to avoid partiality and popularity.
However, I am fixed to the Methodist plan,
and do what I do faithfully as unto God. I
expect trouble is at hand. That I expected
when I left England and I am willing to
suffer, yea, to die, rather than betray so good

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 27

a cause by any means. It will be a hard
matter to stand against all opposition,

*As an iron pillar strong
And steadfast as a wall of brass;'

but through Christ strengthening me I can
do all things. My brethren seem unwilling
to leave the cities, but I will show them the
way. I have nothing to seek but the glory of
God, nothing to fear but his displeasure. I
have come to this country with an upright
intention, and through the grace of God I
will make it appear. I am determined that
no man shall bias me with soft words and
fair speeches; nor will I ever fear the face
of man, or know any man after the flesh, if
I beg my bread from door to door; but,
whomsoever I please or displease, I will be
faithful to God, to the people, and to my owp
soul." These were brave words and he meant
every one of them.

The Methodist Church is the result of mis-
sions. And it has itself always been a mis-
sionary church. The author of Ecce Homo
wrote that Christianit}^ would sacrifice its
divinity if it abandoned its missionary char-

28 FRANCIS ASEURY

acter. The Missionary Society of our
church was organized in 1819. This was
three years after Asbury's death. But it is
a mistake to date the origin of our mission-
ary work from the time of the organization
of that society. Asbury was the originator
of Methodist missions in America. He sent
out his preachers into the farthest and most
destitute frontier settlements and then col-
lected money all over the country for their
support. He did more and sent missionaries
into Xova Scotia and Canada. The Mite
Fund which bears his name he established to
send out German, French, and Spanish mis-
sionaries and to provide for the necessities of
preachers in want.

The first Sunday school on this continent
was established by Asbur}^ in 1786 in Han-
over County, Virginia, in the house of
Thomas Crenshaw. He had previously had
incorporated into the Discipline the follow-
ing paragraph: "Where there are ten chil-
dren whose parents are in society, meet them
at least an hour every week." Later he
added tlie following admonition: "Let us
labor as the heart and soul of one man to

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 29

establish Sunday Schools in or near the
place of public worship. Let persons be ap-
pointed by the bishops, elders, deacons, or
preachers to teach gratis all that will attend
and have a capacity to learn, from six o'clock
in the morning until ten, and from two
o'clock in the afternoon until six, where it
does not interfere with public worship." The
Methodist Episcopal Church to-day has the
largest Sunday school constituency^ of any
church in the world. It numbers more than
four million scholars. What hath God
wrought ! The Sunday schools hold the key
to the church's future.

The great problem of Methodism in our
day is its unification. That Methodism in the
United States is still divided is a source of
the most profound regret. Asbury at all
times stood for a united Methodism and op-
posed with all his influence the divisions in
the church which at different periods of his
career were threatened. In a letter, to Jesse
Lee he wrote: "You and every man that
thinks properly will find it will never do to
divide the North from the South. Method-
ism is union all over; union in exchange of

30 FRANCIS ASBURY

preachers; union in exchange of sentiments;
union in exchange of interest; we must draw
resources from the center to the circumfer-
ence."

Bishop Asbury was not a parhamentar-
ian. He had no use for rules of order.
Bishop McKendree, who was elected in 1808,
was the first bishop who conducted the busi-
ness of a Conference according to parlia-
mentary law. When the General Confer-
ence of 1812 met, McKendree formulated
and presented an order of business. To As-
bury this was a new idea, and after Mc-
Kendree had read his proposal, Asbury, ven-
erable in years and patriarchal in appear-
ance, immediately arose and addressed him
saying, "I have something to say to you be-
fore the Conference." Thereupon Mc-
Kendree arose to his feet and the two men
stood facing each other. Asbury continued :
"This is a new thing; I never did business in
this way, and why is this new thing intro-
duced?" To which McKendree replied:
"You are our father, we are your sons; you
never had need of it. I am only a brother
and I have need of it." Asbury said no more,

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 31

but with a smile resumed his seat. So im-
pressed was Asbury by the superior manner
in which McKendree conducted the business
that he seldom thereafter occupied the chair
of the Conference. As a presiding officer
McKendree perhaps has never been sur-
passed by any of his successors.

Asbury's peculiar talent was in his abil-
ity for governing the preachers. He had a
genius for administration second only to that
of Wesley. This was his chief distinction.
He knew all of his preachers, and without
consulting anyone he sent them where they
could best do their work. In Dr. Buckley's
opinion, "No general ever stationed his
troops with greater skill than Asbury dis-
played in the adjustment of ministerial sup-
plies to the infant societies." He not only
had the genius to lead, but he had the will to
govern, and he exercised it. In matters
ecclesiastical Asbury, as well as Wesley, be-
lieved in and enforced discipline. He admin-
istered with an iron hand and an indomitable
will the powers with which the church had
invested him.

Asbury was not an orator, as Bascom was.

^2 FRANCIS ASBURY

Few preachers in any church have been.
When Bascom spoke no edifice could hold
half of the multitude who flocked to hear him.
Many a time Bascom reached his pulpit by
being passed through a window at the back
of it. His would-be hearers filled the win-
dows and blocked the doors and stood far out
beyond the reach of his voice. Bascom's
manner, his voice, his words, charmed and
held spellbound his vast congregations "as
the Ancient Mariner held the wedding
guest." Asbury was, however, a dignified
and impressive preacher and always terribly
in earnest. Jesse Lee rated him an "excel-
lent" preacher. Boehm, who heard him over
fifteen hundred times, thought him a "supe-
rior" preacher, and said his sermons were
scripturally rich and that he brought out of
his treasury things old and new. He thought
him great at camp meetings, on funeral occa-
sions, and at ordinations. He had heard him
preach fifty ordination sermons, and said
that they were among the most impressive he
had ever heard. President Tipple, in his de-
lightful book, says that there were occasions
when, under the rush of Asbury's utterance,

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 33

people sprang to their feet as if summoned
to the judgment of God.

For fifty-four years Asbury was a
preacher. Throughout all these years he
took advantage of every opportunity to
preach that was presented. He preached
in the streets, in the fields, in private houses,
in courthouses, "behind the barracks" to
the soldiers, "at the gallows to a vast mul-
titude," from "a wagon at the execution"
of criminals, and wherever it was possible
to get people to listen. He strove inces-
santly for perfection. He constantly
preached upon it. "I feel it my duty to
speak chiefly of perfection and, above all,
to strive to attain that which I preach. I am
divinely impressed to preach sanctification
in every sermon." At times he struck terror
into the hearts of those who heard him. He
wrote referring to one of his own sermons:
"It was an awful talk, and the people were
alarmed; let them look to it." "It is our
duty, whether they will hear or whether they
will forbear, to declare that if they die in
their sins they can expect nothing but hell
and damnation." His one thought was to

34 I 1{AXCIS ASIUHY

induce trciiil)liii<;' penitents to lay hold on
Jesus as their Saviour, that through his aton-
ing hlood they might be saved. It ma}^ be
said of him, as it was of Jesse Lee, that his
eloquence was the simple eloquence of trutli
"unadorned with any other flowers than such
as he had gathered from tlie garden of the
Lord, the Holy Scriptures." If to-day we
felicitate ourselves that "Sinai no longer
belches forth flame and fury," we must re-
member that in estimating Asbur}^ he must
be judged by the standards of his age. If he
aroused the fears of his hearers, it was be-
cause he thought there was no other way of
reaching them. And if he aroused fear, did
he not also allay it? The message he de-
livered was the Great Salvation.

Salvation! O the joyful sound!

What pleasure to our ears!
A sovereign balm for every wound,

A cordial for our fears.

Lord Rosebery, speaking of the weak-
ness of Robert Burns and the spot on the
poet's mantle, said that we all have some-
thing to be grateful for in the weaknesses of
great men. Mankind is helped in its prog-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 35

ress almost as iiiucii by the study of imper-
fection as by the contemplation of perfection.
We cannot suppose Asbuiy was entirely free
from human weaknesses. That he was free
from personal ambition must be conceded.
That he was autocratic is also true. That he
did not always control his feelings is shown
by the following incident : In one of the Con-
ferences Jesse Lee spoke in advocacy of a
certain matter and saw from the expression
on Asbury's face that he was against him.
Thereupon Lee, addressing the bishop, asked
whether he, Lee, had common sense. As-
bury answered, "You have uncommon
sense." "Then," said Lee, "if I have uncom-
mon sense, I ought to have an uncommon
hearing." Whereupon Asbury is said to
have turned his back and to have written
letters until Lee finished his speech. And
Asbury and Coke for a short time so dis-
agreed that it was almost necessary that they
should not meet.

In our day there are some ministers whose
purses are not empty of gold or silver. The
Archbishop of Canterbury is given Lambeth
Palace and a salar}^ of seventy-five thousand

86 FRANCIS ASIUJHY

dollars a year. The bishops of the Church
of England receive fifty thousand dollars a
year. In our country the same munificence
is not extended to tlie bishops of any of the
churches. There may be a few gifted min-
isters who receive eighteen thousand dollars
a year. But the average salary of a preacher
in our church is about one thousand dollars a
year. Our people too often forget that it
was said:

"Do ye not know that they which minister
about holy things live of the things of the
temple ? and they which wait at the altar are
partakers with the altar? Even so hath the
Lord ordained that they which preach the
gospel should live of the gospel."

Martin Luther devised what he called "a
good book for the laity." It contained a
series of wood cuts depicting contrasts be-
tween Christ and the pope. One was Christ
driving the money changers out of the
temple, and the pope selling indulgences with
piles of money before him. In America in
the days of Francis Asbury a Methodist
preacher never had but a few dollars in his
pocket.

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 37

When Christ called his twelve disciples
and gave them power against unclean spirits
and sent them forth, he bade them to pro-
vide neither gold or silver, nor scrip for their
journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor
yet staves. The disciples heard and obeyed,
and so did Paul. So did Saint Francis of
Assisi when he made that pilgrimage to
Rome and flung all that he possessed on the
altar of Saint Peter's and joined himself to
a troop of beggars. The great Franciscan
order which Assisi founded obeyed. So did
Wesley and Asbury. And so have other men
among the living and the dead to whom man-
kind owe reverence and honor. It is well for
the world that such men have lived. Theirs
have been splendid souls. Their only am-
bition has been to serve. Their ideas of duty
have not been measured bj^ a gold standard.

Asbury's salaiy, even after he became a
bishop, was sixty-four dollars a year and
traveling expenses. It was later increased
to eighty dollars. In 1804 he notes in his
Journal: "The superintendent bishop of the
Methodist Episcopal Church in America be-
ing reduced to two dollars, was obliged to

38 FRANCIS ASBURY

make his wants known." In 1806 he was at-
tending the Western Conference and there
he found some of the preachers poorer than
himself. And he writes : "The brethren were
in want and could not suit themselves, so I
parted with my watch and my cloak and my
shirt." On one occasion a friend of Asbury's
wanted to borrow or beg fifty dollars from
him. Commenting on the fact, Asbury
writes: "He might as well have asked me for
Peru. I showed him all the money I had
in the world — about twelve dollars — and
gave him five. Strange that neither my
friends nor my enemies will believe that I
neither have nor seek bags of money. Well,
they shall believe by demonstration what I
have ever been striving to prove, that I will
live and die a poor man." He was laying up
his treasure in heaven.

He wore his clothes threadbare and often
they were shabby in appearance. The fact
needs no apology. They were as good as his
salary allowed. He took no thought for his
life, what he should eat or what he should
drink ; nor yet for his body, what he should
put on. He had his wish, and lived and died

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 30

a poor man. There was not a day after he
came to America when he could not truth-
fully have said,

**No foot of land do I possess,
No cottage in this wilderness,
A poor wayfaring man."

In one of his inmiortal tragedies Sophocles
exclaims "Who can tell whether to live may
not be to die, and to die may not be to live?"
In contemplating the life of Francis Asbury
we can realize that the thought of Sophocles
is true. If Asbury had been content to re-
main in England, had led the life of a selfish
man contented with conditions as he found
them, we should not to-day commemorate
his death. We are here because he left home,
father, mother, friends, and native land, and
here in America, without earthly recompense,
endured for more than forty-five years the
privations and labors which wore him out and
broke him down. His whole life was one of
utmost self-sacrifice. Trevelyan, in his
American Revolution, says of Asbury that
he was a man who did not seek and who led
a life which was above worldly praise. No

40 FRANCIS ASBURY

finer tribute could be paid to any man than
that. As liis Hfe passes in review before us,
we reahze how true is the saying of Hugh
Price Hughes that "Not self-assertion, but
limitless self-suppression, is the secret of
life." The greatest characters are the most
unselfish. All sin and all misery in the ulti-
mate analysis have their root in selfishness.

Asbury never married. In his Journal in
1804, when he was fifty-nine years old, he
made this entry: "If I should die in celi-
bacy, which I think quite probable, I give the
following reasons for what can scarcely be
called my choice." He then gave an account
of his life and said: "At forty-nine I was
ordained superintendent bishop in America.
Among the duties imposed upon me by my
office was that of traveling extensively, and
I could hardly expect to find a woman with
grace enough to enable her to live but one
week out of the fifty-two with her husband.
. . . It is neither just nor generous. I
may add to this that I had little money, and
with this little administered to the neces-
sities of a beloved mother until I was fifty-
seven. . . . It is mv dutv now to bestow

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 41

the pittance I may have to spare upon the
widows and fatherless girls and poor married
men."

In his Journal of July 12, 1805, Asbury
wrote: "Marriage is honorable in all, but to
me it is a ceremony awful as death. Well
may it be so, when I calculate we have lost
the traveling labors of two hundred of the
best men in America, or the world, by mar-
riage and consequent location."

The early itinerants as a rule did not
marry. Those who did usually ceased
preaching. In the General Conference of
1783 seventy out of eighty were unmarried.
When one married he usually ceased to be a
traveling preacher.

In those days the wife of a traveling
preacher was paid a salary. In the Min-
utes of the General Conference of 1796,
Question 21 reads: "What directions shall be
given concerning the salaries of the wives of
traveling preachers?" The answer is: "The
wife of every traveling preacher shall have
the same claim to a yearly salary of sixty-
four dollars as a traveling preacher."

Asbury's character was heroic. Luther

42 FRAXCIS ASBURY

went to the Diet of Worms believing that he
was going to his death. Asbury with a hke
courage would have made the same journey
if similarly summoned. If the necessity
which confronted Luther had confronted
Asbury, it cannot be doubted what his answer
would have been. "I cannot and will not
retract anything, for to act against con-
science is unsafe and unholy. I can do
nought else. Here stand I. God help me."

If he had been imprisoned for years in the
dungeons of the Inquisition, as Bruno was,
and then brought forth to die, we have no
doubt that as the fire was kindled about him
he too would have declined to recant and
would have died an equally willing martyr.

In his Winning of the West Mr. Roose-
velt has paid an appreciative tribute to the
early circuit riders of the frontier settle-
ments. To them, he says, the country owes
an immense debt; that "Wherever there was
a group of log cabins thither some Meth-
odist circuit rider made his way, or there
some Baptist preacher took up his abode."
He points out that they yielded scores of
martyrs, nameless and unknown men who

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 43

perished at the hands of the savages, or by
sickness or by flood or storm. They had to
face not only Indians but white inhabitants
who sometimes were so lawless and godless
that they were more to be feared. These
"nameless" and "unknown" men deserve to
be remembered here this day. Like Asbury,
they are worthy of our honor and reverence
for their heroism and self-sacrifice. What
they planted was the handful of corn upon
the mountains from which we have so abun-
dantly reaped. But the greatest of the cir-
cuit riders was Francis Asbury.

Asbury preached about sixteen thousand
five hundred sermons, traveled about two
hundred and seventy thousand miles, most of
it on horseback, some of it on foot, presided
in no less than two hundred and twenty-four
Annual Conferences, and ordained more
than four thousand preachers. In addition
he was writing a thousand letters a year. He
records in his Journal: "I suppose that I
must write nearly a thousand in a year."

No man of his age traveled as much or as
far as Asbury. He rode from fifteen to fifty
miles a day, averaging six thousand miles a

44. FRANCIS ASBURY

year. His travels took him from the At-
lantic to the Mississippi and from the Gulf
of Mexico to the Saint Lawrence. He
crossed the Alleghenies sixty times. With
the spirit of his Master and the zeal of an
apostle he swept through the continent with
tireless energ}\ No danger intimidated him.
No obstacle diverted him. No suffering
overcame him. He traversed forests, pene-
trated the wilderness, climbed mountains,
and followed the trail of savage hunters and
the track of the wild beasts. He slept fre-
quently on the ground, and sometimes in the
rain, and sometimes among the rocks in the
mountains, with no covering but the sky, and
sometimes on the floor of a lonely and de-
serted cabin.

O, far from home thy footsteps stray;
Christ is the life, and Christ the way.
And Christ the light;

The rising tempest sweeps the sky;
The rains descend, the winds are high;
The waters swell, and death and fear
Beset thy path, nor refuge near.

Like Paul, he was in journeyings often, in
perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 45

by his country men, in perils by the heathen,
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilder-
ness, in perils among false brethren. In
weariness and painfulness, in watchings
often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often,
in cold and nakedness.

His last sermon was preached at Rich-
mond when he was so weak that he had to be
carried in the arms of his friends from the
carriage to the church. He was so ill that
he preached sitting on a table. The sermon
was nearly an hour in length, and the large
company listened with tearful eyes and
throbbing hearts. They knew it was the end.
They carried him back to his carriage and
took him to the house of an old friend at
Shenandoah, twenty miles from Fredericks-
burg. And there, the battle fought, the vic-
tory won, this old prophet and priest and
servant of God was numbered with the dead.
The messenger of the Lord came to him on
March 31, 1816.

Tranquil amid alarms,

It found him on the field,
A veteran, slumbering on his arms,

Beneath his red-cross shield.

46 FRANCIS ASBIJHY

His sword was in his hand.

Still warm with recent fight,
Ready that moment, at command

Through rock and steel to smite.

The pains of death are past,

Labor and sorrow cease;
And, life's long warfare closed at last,

His soul is found in peace.

Soldier of Christ, well done!

It is impossible to say how long after death
the names of men will remain in the memory
of the living. In the confusion wrought by
time names once thought immortal sink into
oblivion. They are as a wind that passeth
away and which cometh not again. How-
ever, I cannot but believe that the name of
Francis Asbury, what he achieved, what he
endured, what he sacrificed, will be acclaimed
in the coming centuries and so long as our
Methodism stands. The years and the
events of the century which has passed have
not obscured him. Do we not this day see
him? Are not his wan and furrowed face
and his venerable form still visible?

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 4.7

I apply to him with shght change words
once spoken with less justification of another,
and say, that as he who looks upon the heav-
ens beholds a constellation gleaming in the
light of a single star, so he who recalls the
past of Methodism in America, the labors,
sorrows, self-sacrifice, and sometimes the al-
most martyrdom of its sons, will find rising
to his lips the honored name of Francis As-
burv.

THEN AND NOW

Bishop Joseph F. Berry

FRANCIS ASBURY— THE BISHOP

Bishop Frank M. Bristol

FRANCIS ASBURY— ITINERANT

Bishop Frederick D. Leete

Addresses Delivered before the General Conference
of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Saratoga
Springs, New York, May, 1916, on the Occasion
of the Commemoration of the Centennial of the
Death of Bishop Asbury.

THEN AND NOW

Personality is the greatest thing in the
world. History is but the biography of great
men. This republic was builded around
forceful personalities. From them our na-
tional life took on its ideals and form. The
character and aspirations of Washington,
Jefferson, and Lincoln, with others, have
been indelibly stamped upon our institutions.
This is equally true of our church, whose be-
ginning was contemporaneous with that of
the republic. American Methodism is the
incarnation of the ideals and spirit of the
Wesleys, of Asbury, Lee, Garrettson, Mc-
Kendree, Dickins, Cooper, Bascome, Mc-
Clintock, Simpson, Galloway, and the impe-
rial Warren. Being dead they yet speak.

The dominating personality of American
Methodism during its formative period was
Francis Asbury. His influence among the
pioneer preachers and people was almost
supreme. His spirituality, heroism, evangel-
istic passion, and sacrificial service became
their chief human inspiration. His type be-

51

52 FRANCIS ASIU RY

came the type of the infant eliurch. That
type was perpetuated through the years, and
tliough somewhat modified by changed con-
ditions, is with us yet. Francis Asbury has
been dead for a hundred years, but he is liv-
ing still.

Asbury lived in pioneer days. The re-
public was just struggling into life. The
sparse population occupied a narrow fringe
of territory along the Atlantic seaboard.
Beyond this fringe was a vast wilderness.
Public roads were mere trails through virgin
forests. Rivers were unbridged. Railroads
were unknown. The average house was a
cabin. There was no telegraph. Most of the
people were strangers in a strange land.
Nearly all were poor. But how marvelous
the changes which a hundred years have
wrought !

The boundaries of the republic have been
pushed westward to the sea and southward
to the Rio Grande. All sections of our terri-
tory have been tied together by bands of
steel. The iron horse steams everj^where.
Our territory sustains a population of a hun-
dred millions of souls. Wealth has increased.

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 53

Our bankers are now the bankers of the
world. Colleges and universities dot the
land. Great institutions of beneficence and
other concrete expressions of the highest
forms of Christian conscience and culture
greet you at every turn.

And the changes in the status of Method-
ism are quite as amazing. A while ago I
traveled the Sam's Creek circuit in Mary-
land. I visited the spot where Robert Straw-
bridge, standing under the great oak,
preached the gospel to eager throngs. I
went to the old Evans meetinghouse, where,
in the earliest days, the settlers gathered for
worship. I lingered some time in the
prophet's chamber of the old Warfield home,
where Asbury often lodged and where Mc-
Kendree wrote large portions of his journal.

Returning to Baltimore, I stood for a time
in reverie at the site of Lovely Lane chapel,
where assembled the Christmas Conference.
In fancy I saw the historic group. There
was Coke, sensitive, cultured, rhetorical.
There also was Asbury, modest, heroic, and
aflame with the fever of the evangelist.
With these leaders were twenty-three intrep-

54 FKAXCIS ASBURY

id pioneers, half of them scarcely more than
hoys. At tliat time we had a memhership of
fourteen tliousand. There was no Book Con-
cern. There was no Missionary Society.
The leaders had scarcely caught a vision of
the coming educational victories of their
church. How amazing the change! That
one Conference has multiplied into two hun-
dred and fortj\ The twenty-three preachers
have expanded into an itinerant arm forty-
six thousand strong. The fourteen thousand
members have grown to eight millions. We
have an equal number of Sunday school
scholars. We have a million of members in
our Epworth Leagues. Those in the re-
public who may be classed as Methodist
members and adherents must make up a
company of twenty-five millions of souls.
Well may we adapt the words of our own
matchless singer and apply them to the
growth of the Methodist movement on this
continent :

When at first the work began.
Small and feeble was its day;

Now the word doth swiftly run,
Now it wins its widening way;

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 55

More and more it spreads and grows,

Ever mighty to prevail;
Sin's strongholds it now o'erthrows,

Shakes the trembling gates of hell.

There are other contrasts: Among the
unique experiences of my life in Philadelphia
are my visits to the old cathedral of our
Methodism, Saint George's Church, where
Asbury preached his first sermon after land-
ing in the New World. I particularly love
to linger in the famous "Conference room,"
where the first American Methodist Confer-
ence was held, in July, 1773, with an attend-
ance of seven preachers. The room has been
preserved, so far as possible, in its original
state. The plates and mugs used to pass the
bread and water at the first love feast are still
there. And certain entries in a well-pre-
served account book suggest a marvelous
change in the attitude of Methodist preachers
concerning liquor and its use. The old book
actually shows that no very modest amount
of ale and stout was ordered for the occasion.
In those days a teetotaler was considered a
fanatic, and the consumption of a moderate
amount of toddy was not regarded as incom-

5(y FKANCIS ASBUKY

patible with high spiritual attainment. It is
not so now. In our day the Annual Con-
ference has become the chief dynamo of the
temperance reform. So intense is tlie convic-
tion of the Methodist preacher concerning
the rum abomination, and so susceptible is
he to an emotional appeal, that the dullest
official speech-maker, failing to arouse inter-
est in behalf of his cause, is sure to turn aside
temporarily to the temperance question, and
seldom fails to start a tempest of enthusiasm
w^hich carries him triumphantly across the
barren spot in his discourse, and makes his
effort a rhetorical success. If we have forty-
six thousand Methodist preachers to-day, we
have forty-six thousand zealous, uncom-
promising enemies of the liquor curse. And
if we have eight millions of members, we fur-
nish out of that total the most numerous,
the most consistent, the most intense, the
most dreaded, and the most damaging force
in all the republic in the fierce fight to out-
law and forever annihilate the American
saloon.

There are still other contrasts. Methodist
churches in Bishop Asbury's time were ex-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 57

cessively plain. Interior walls were merely
whitewashed. The floors were uncarpeted.
The pulpit was high, resting on a single pillar
and reached by a flight of winding stairs.
The Discipline of that time contained the
question, "Is there any exception to the rule,
'let the men and women sit apart'?" An-
swer: "There is no exception. Let them sit
apart in all the churches." Into these un-
adorned churches came men and women of
utter plainness of dress, the men with
straight coats and white cravats without knot
in front; the women with coal-scuttle bon-
nets without flower or feather or ribbon.
What a striking contrast to the congrega-
tions which now assemble in our elegant
churches, or even those in attendance at the
General Conference at Saratoga! Yet,
who will say that there was more real religion
then than now ?

I remember that Daniel De Motte was
once arraigned by the Indiana Conference
for having come to the session wearing a
beard. It was said that Edward R. Ames
lost an election to the General Conference
because he wore side whiskers. That same

58 FRANCIS ASBURY

Conference passed a resolution instructing
all the preachers to wear straight-hreasted
and shad-hellied coats, and trousers with
broad falls.

I recall the horrified exclamation of Mr.
Asbury when he visited Newport, Rhode
Island, and first saw the new church edifice.
"A steeple and a bell," he blurted out, *'a
steeple and a bell; the next thing will be an
organ and a choir; then farewell to Method-
ism!" Well, the steeple and the bell were
followed by the organ and the choir, and the
church really survived the shock. And we
shall still face the sunrise, and eagerly grasp
every new method and appliance that prom-
ises to make the dear old church more efficient
amid the new conditions which constantly
confront her.

But why are we holding commemorative
exercises to-day? Why have we turned aside
from the urgent business of the session to
spend the hour thinking of our illustrious
father, who one hundred years ago went up
from a life of marvelous toil to his corona-
tion? It is not to indulge ourselves in ful-
some eulogy. It is not because we hope to

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 59

add luster to his name, but, rather, that, in
the presence of this representative body of
world Methodism, we may emphasize again
the spiritual endowments and the unique
forms of service which made his life so great ;
and also to remind ourselves that if Meth-
odism is to win large victories amid the com-
plex conditions of modern life, she must res-
olutely hold to certain fundamentals of doc-
trine and life which the fathers believed were
vital. I mention but two of these in as many
brief paragraphs.

First, I remember their loyalty to the
Word. Faith in the authority and integrity
of the Book was absolute. Doubt seldom
dimmed their vision nor dampened their zeal.
This explains the positive note in their
preaching, and accounts for the fact that the
pulpit was always on fire. The teaching of
the Book about the exceeding sinfulness of
sin, and retribution for the finally impeni-
tent, the personal deity of Jesus, the atone-
ment, regeneration, the witness of the Spirit,
and an uttermost salvation through the
cleansing of the blood — these fundamentals
were accepted without question, and declared

60 FRANCIS ASBURY

to the people without apology or modifica-
tion. That is why sinners trenihled in their
congregations, and accounts for tlie fact that
in almost every meeting held on Sunday or
on week day, people were convicted of sin
and gloriously saved from its power. We
w^ho are the spiritual sons and daughters of
Asbury must not let go our absolute faith in
the old Book. We have come to a day of
questioning. Men are deciphering hiero-
glyphics, and studying clay tablets, and un-
covering ruins, and exploring tombs, and
sifting dust heaps, and are going with their
microscopes over every chapter and verse to
see if they cannot find a flaw. This scholar-
ship has proclaimed practical evolution. It
has sought to eliminate the supernatural, and
has transferred into mere myths some of the
tallest personalities of the Scriptures.

Now, I am quite sure that our church
should continue to be hospitable toward a
scholarship that is reverent and construc-
tive, and which comes to the examination of
the Book with uncovered head and unsan-
daled feet — with prayer for the illumination
of the Holy Spirit, whose function it is to

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 01

read into all truths. But for the sake of the
kingdom of God on earth, and the kingdom
of evangelical Christianity which we so
largely represent, we should be most inhos-
pitable to all biblical criticism that is irrever-
ent, ruthless, and destructive.

Dear brethren, now that the scare occa-
sioned by irreverent attacks upon the Bible
has passed away, is it not astonishing how
little hurt has been done ! The dear old Book
has come through the hot fire unharmed.
Historically it has stood the test. Abraham
still stands tall before the ages. Moses is
still the incomparable lawgiver. Isaiah still
looks forward with rapturous gaze to the
manger and the cross. Daniel still stands in
his lot and place. Ruth still teaches her
golden lessons of devotion and love. And
Jonah, though he has had a rather stormy
time of it, has not yet faded into allegorical
mist. And the doctrines of the Book are just
as they were. The story of the fall, the
promise of redemption, the plan of salvation,
the virgin birth, the miracles, the sacrificial
death, the empty tomb, the supernatural as-
cension, and the tongues of fire are all there.

(i2 FRANCIS ASIUTKY

HainiiKT away, ye hostile bands;

Your hammers break, God's anvil stands.

Second. It will sound very trite to you,
hut I must say it, the chief business of Mr.
Asbury and his colaborers was that of evan-
gelism. They went everywhere dehvering
the evangehstic message, and teUing their ex-
perience. They preached for souls. They
prayed for souls. They went from house to
house seeking souls. Winning men back to
God, their ministry was a success. Falling
short in that sublime mission, they were hu-
miliated by a sense of failure. That still is
the chief business of the Methodists. We are
doing other things very well. We are build-
ing great churches. We are endowing col-
leges. We are strengthening our missionary
enterprises at home and abroad. We are
establishing hospitals, and orphanages, and
homes for the aged. We are developing
great new forces in our deaconess movement,
our Epworth Leagues, and the marvelous
Bible class organizations.

But if we do the normal work of ^lethod-
ism, we must regard all these agencies as
evangelistic agencies. The Methodist min-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 63

ister has been the chief evangehst of the cen-
tury. He must rnaintain that preeminence.
No tent nor tabernacle evangehsm must be
permitted to force him to surrender his
leadership. Any form of evangelism that
discounts the pastor's evangelistic commis-
sion and responsibility is a menace to our
church. We must guard against superficial-
ity. It will be no advantage to us to crowd
our churches with unconverted members.
Sinners must still be called to repentance.
They must still cry to God for mercy. They
must still be regenerated by the Holy Ghost,
and must still have the definite witness in
their souls that they are born of God. There
will not be uniformity in external expression,
of course, but there must be a blessed uni-
formity in the reality of a victorious heart
experience.

The Father hears him pray,

His dear Anointed One;
He cannot turn away

The presence of His Son ;
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.

I hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of the

(;i 1 HANC18 ASIUTRY

Weslcyan armies of the world. 1 lift my
eyes, and behold the plains and the valleys
are filled with swiftly moving columns, their
banners waving in the breeze. They come
from everywhere. From the mountains and
valleys of the sunset coast. From the fruit-
ful prairies of the Middle West. From the
denser populations of the East — scenes of
Asbury's toils and conquests. From Mex-
ico and the Latin republics to the south.
From under blue Canadian skies. From
England and her dependencies around the
earth. From Norway, and Sweden, and
Denmark, and Russia, and Germany, and
Switzerland, and Hungary, and Italy, and
France. From vast, sable Africa. From
mighty India. From China, and Japan, and
Korea, and the islands of the seas.

What an army ! What an army ! And the
long lines of our sacramental hosts seem
ready to move out to the conquest of the
w^orld.

In the name of Protestant Christianity
which looks to us still for aggressive leader-
ship; in the name of every righteous cause
whose destiny, in this crucial hour, seems to

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 65

be trembling in the balance; in the name of
youthful millions who pass through an
enemy's country, and whose ranks must be
fearfully decimated by the subtle warfare of
a hellish foe; in the name of our veterans,
scarred and bleeding from wounds received
upon a hundred battlefields ; by the memory
of our fallen heroes ; yea, by the memory of
the whitened face, and parched lips, and
quivering limbs, and breaking heart, and dy-
ing agonies of the Son of God, I speak unto
you soldiers marshaled under the banner of
the Wesleys and of Asbury — I cry — "For-
ward march!"

Once the glorious morn has broken, who shall say

What the unimagined glories of the day,

What the evils that shall perish in its ray;

Aid the dawning tongue and pen.

Aid it hosts of royal men,

Aid it paper, aid it type,

Aid it for the hour is ripe,

And our earnest must not slacken into play,

Sons of Wesley, eager, earnest, lead the way!

FRANCIS ASBURY— THE BISHOP

An hundred wonderful years have passed
since Bishop Ashury closed his apostolic
labors. Through that stirring century^ of
time the genius and spirit of the greatest itin-
erant bishop of all time has been felt with
an inspiring power in the mighty evangel-
istic movement which has characterized the
religious awakening and progress of the
modern world. The close of the eighteenth
and opening of the nineteenth century were
characterized by the appearance of four tre-
mendous history-making forces — the Declar-
ation of Independence, the steam engine, ap-
plied electricity, and Methodism. No philos-
ophy of American history can be adequate
that fails to recognize these political, eco-
nomic, scientific, and spiritual forces as the
most potent factors in our national develop-
ment. What Washington was to the Revo-
lution, what Watt or Fulton was to the steam
motor, and what Franklin was to the appli-
cation of electricity that was Francis Asbury
to the evangelistic movement which has cul-
minated in a world-wide JMethodism.

66

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 67

England's most valuable contribution to
the New World was Francis Asbury. Nor
do we forget that there were giants in those
days — the days of Washington, Napoleon,
and Wellington, the days of Chatham, Fox,
and Burke, the days of Wesley, Fletcher,
and Coke, the days of the signers of the De-
claration of Independence and of the f ramers
of the Constitution of the United States, the
days of the heroes of Concord and Bunker
Hill, of Saratoga and Yorktown, of Trafal-
gar and Waterloo. And yet Francis Asbury
stood among the great of that great time to
be seen by all the future as second to none in
helping to shape the very destiny of Chris-
tendom. If the rise and development of
Methodism in England and America have
contributed as largely to the progress of
Anglo-Saxon civilization as the most author-
itative historians would have us believe, then
Francis Asbury will stand beside the su-
preme men and one of the tallest in the
temple of enduring fame.

It is sufficient in our estimate of the char-
acter and abilities of Asbury to be assured
that John Weslev, that astute ecclesiastical

08 FRANCIS ASBUKY

statesman, found in him the promise of the
superb and consecrated leadership which was
to blaze a way througli the frontiers of the
world for the triumphant advance of Meth-
odism and of every form of evangelical and
evangelistic Christianity. At the age of
twenty-six and the year of his arrival in this
country he was appointed by Mr. Wesley as
his assistant in the American work. This
position was what might be called a lay epis-
copacy. Mr. Wesley, himself, exercised all
the functions of a bishop and was that, except
in name. As his assistant, and after Ran-
kin's return to England as his general assist-
ant, Asbury, in the language of Bishop Coke
and of Asbury himself, "for many years be-
fore exercised every branch of the episcopal
office excepting that of ordination." The
question was asked in the Conference of
1779: "Ought not Brother Asbury to act as
general assistant in America?" The answer
was, "He ought."

In a sense, therefore, Asbury was the first
bishop of American Methodism. So abun-
dant were his labors in this office of what
may be called assistant bishop, so profound

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 69

was his piety, so absolutely self-sacrificing
was his ministry of toil and suffering, so strict
and yet eminently just were his discipline
and administration, so evangelistic were his
methods of religious propaganda, and so
manifestly superlative was his genius for
leadership, that when Mr. Wesley appointed
him joint superintendent with Bishop Coke
over our brethren in North America, he was
with Dr. Coke received by a vote of the First
General Conference, and that unanimously.

It was at this, the famous Christmas Con-
ference held in Lovely Lane Chapel, Balti-
more, in 1784, that the strength and inde-
pendence of Asbury's character were re-
vealed. Surprised as he was at the intelli-
gence that came to him and the American
Methodists in the letter of Mr. Wesley ap-
pointing him associate bishop or general
superintendent with Bishop Coke, he re-
fused to accept the high office except b}^ the
unanimous vote of the preachers. He said
to Bishop Coke, "We will call the preachers
together and the voice of the preachers shall
be to me the voice of God." Moreover, his
further answer was, "If the preachers unani-

70 FRANCIS ASBURY

mouslv choose me, I shall not act in the ca-
pacity I have hitherto done by Mr. Wesley's
appomtment." Clearly understanding his
position, strong, independent, thoroughly
American in spirit, as it was, the General
Conference on Monday, December 26, by a
unanimous vote elected him superintendent,
or bishop, of the newly organized Methodist
Episcopal Church. Swiftly was Asbury in-
ducted into the orders of the ministry, and
into the episcopacy. It will be remembered
that up to that Christmas Conference As-
bury had not been an ordained minister.
Through all those previous eighteen or
twenty years of his ministerial activity, he
had been no more nor less than a lay
preacher. But now that Coke has come with
the authority of ordination and that the
preachers have agreed to form themselves
into an Episcopal Church, and to have su-
perintendents, elders, and deacons, and that
the General Conference has elected Asbury
to deacon's and elder's orders, he is ordained
a deacon on Saturday, or Christmas day, or-
dained an elder on Sunday, and elected and
consecrated a bishop on Monda3^

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 71

We use here the term ''consecrated" as
conveying at the present time the true mean-
ing of the service by which an elder elected
to the episcopacy is inducted into that office.
The fathers often used the terms "set apart,"
"consecrated" and "ordained" as synony-
mous. There can be no doubt that Asbury
agreed with Wesley and Coke and with the
best scholars of his time that the episcopacy
is an office and not an order. He, therefore,
cared nothing for the fiction of "apostolic
succession," and even treated in a witty, if
not humorous, vein, the charge made against
him of possessing tyrannical powers as a
Methodist bishop.

He writes in his diary: "I will make a few
observations upon the ignorance of foolish
men who will rail against our church govern-
ment. The Methodists acknowledge no su-
periority but what is founded on senior-
ity, election, and long and faithful service.
For myself, I pity those who cannot dis-
tinguish between a pope of Rome and an
old worn man of about sixty years who
has the power given him of riding five thou-
sand miles a year (on horseback) at a salar}^

72 FRANCIS ASBURY

of eiglity dollars through summer's heat and
winter's cold, traveling in all weather,
preaching in all places, his covering from
rain often hut a blanket ; the severest sharp-
ener of his wit, hunger — from fast voluntary
and involuntary ; his best fare for six months
of the twelve coarse kindness; and his reward
suspicion, envy, and murmurings all the year
round."

While it is true that it was not until 1787
that superintendents were first called bishops
in the Discipline, it is also true that the An-
nual Minutes for 1785 state that at the Gen-
eral Conference, which met the year before,
the preachers say: "We formed ourselves
into an independent church; and following
the counsel of John Wesley, who recom-
mended the episcopal mode of church gov-
ernment, we thought it best to become an
Episcopal Church, making the episcopal
office elective, and the elected superintendent,
or bishop, amenable to the bodj^ of ministers
and preachers." And yet to show the democ-
racy of early Methodism, it will be noted that
while the title page of the first Discipline
bears the names of the Rev. Thomas Coke,

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 73

LL.D., and the Rev. Francis Asbury, the
title page of the DiscipHne of 1798 bears the
simple names, Thomas Coke and Francis
Asbury. In the first episcopal address no
use is made of the term "bishop," or even
"superintendent"; the closing words of the
address are these: "We remain j^our very
affectionate brethren and pastors who la-
bor day and night, both in public and pri-
vate, for your good. Thomas Coke, Francis
Asbury."

More frequently in those early Disciplines
will be found "Brother Coke" and "Brother
Asbury" than Bishop Coke and Bishop As-
bury. But who in all the splendid history of
the Christian Church ever made fuller or
more satisfactory proof of his episcopal min-
istry than Francis Asbury? Never for a
single moment seeming to felicitate himself
upon the dignities of his office, he went forth
the flaming itinerant, the evangelist-bishop,
ambitious for nothing but the salvation of
the people. "Let me suffer and let me labor,
time is short and souls are daily lost," he
writes, as one who could cry with the apostle
Paul: "God forbid that I should glory, save

74 FRANCIS ASEURY

in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom the world is crucified unto nie, and I
unto the world."

Asbury claimed that while Mr. Wesley
governed without any responsibility what-
ever, "the American bishops are as respons-
ible as any of the preachers. They are per-
fectly subject to the General Conference.
They are indeed conscious that the Confer-
ence would neither degrade nor censure them,
unless they deserved it." Asbur^^'s view of
the episcopal office has been accepted and is
now accepted by the consensus of Methodist
scholarship.

Asbury was rarely and richl}^ endowed
with the gifts and grace which fitted him for
the episcopal office. Though without aca-
demic training, he was a life-long student, an
omnivorous reader, mastering a vast range
of the learning of his time, in history, philos-
ophy, theology, letters and even the classical
languages. Though not a man of vivid im-
agination, poetical fancy, or transcendent
gifts of eloquence, it may be said of him with
a spiritual meaning, as was said of Welling-
ton in the military, that he was :

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 75

Rich in saving common sense,
Foremost captain of his time;

And, as the greatest only are
In his simplicity sublime.

He was austere and yet the soul of kind-
ness and justice; strict disciplinarian as any
general, but always a brother in the gospel ;
cool-headed as a Paul, and warm-hearted as
a Saint John; fervent as a Saint Peter, and
practical as a Saint James; an ecclesiastical
statesman of the first order to be compared
with a Richelieu, but a gospel evangelist, if
not of as eloquent a speech, surely of as self-
sacrificing a devotion and consecration as a
Saint Francis, a Bernard, or a Savonarola.
And to all these gifts and attainments add
that genius for constructive leadership in
which even a Wesley scarcely excelled him,
and in which we find the initiating philosophy
of the triumphs of a century of evangelism,
and you have the combination in character
and personality of the greatest man in the
history of American Methodism.

For thirty-two years Bishop Asbury led
the ever-growing, multiplying Methodist
hosts which he saw increase in number from

70 FRANCIS ASBURY

fifteen thousand to two hundred and fifteen
thousand; while its ministry increased from
eighty-three to six hundred and ninety-five;
nay, for one hundred years has that great
itinerant evangehst statesman hishop led us
on until from the heights of glory he may
behold with joy that greatness, power, and
universality of Methodism of which he could
not have had the vision or the dream. The
spirit of Asbury is with us yet.

Whatever may have been the suggestion
of Mr. Wesley as to the new organization,
it was Bishop Asbury's ecclesiastical states-
manship that laid deep and broad the founda-
tion of Episcopal Methodism. We do not
detract from the glory of a Coke, a Lee, a
Garrettson, a Dickins, a Cooper, an Abbott,
or a McKendree, when we believe that with-
out the constructive, organizing and admin-
istrative genius of Asbury, Methodism never
could have become the mighty force for
world-evangelism which it has come to be.
Bishop Asbury shaped the essential policy
of American Methodism for all time. His
w^isdom contributed more sane, unchanging,
abiding, fundamental law to our Methodist

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 77

Episcopal Discipline than did the wisdom of
any other one man. The entire change of
form of the Discipline of 1787 was prin-
cipally the work of Asbury.

In the explanatory notes appended to the
Discipline of 1796, Asbury with Coke gave a
most exhaustive and able exposition of the
rules and law of the church; an exposition
which the church has accepted as author-
itative down to the present time. The au-
thority given to Asbury and Coke bj^ the
General Conference of 1796 by requesting
them to prepare this interpretation of the
Discipline did not continue and would not be
granted the bishops of to-day by the Gen-
eral Conference.

The first elders of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church were elected by the General
Conference, and the office of an elder was
"To administer the sacraments of baptism
and the Lord's Supper, and to perform all
the other rites prescribed by our Liturg}\"
On the advice of Mr. Wesley, the General
Conference elected twelve elders for the
above purpose. Bishop Asbury, taking the
suggestion of Mr. Wesley, thought out the

78 FRANCIS ASBURY

larger plan of the presiding eldership which
has developed into the district superintend-
ency; this office, which for more than a cen-
tury has been a most useful, if not an abso-
lutely essential part of our polity, originated
in the ecclesiastical acumen of Bishop As-
hury.

While the rule requiring the preacher "to
form Sunday schools" did not appear in the
Discipline until after the death of Asbury,
nor, indeed, until as late as 1828, it will be
found that the rules respecting the instruc-
tion of children were amplified and empha-
sized by Asbury, and in the notes prepared
for the Discipline of 1796 the bishops called
special attention to those rules, using the
language which seems to express the ad-
vanced thought of our own age : "The proper
education of children is of exceeding great
moment to the welfare of mankind. . . .
The welfare of the states and countries in
which they live, and what is infinitely more,
the salvation of their souls, do, under the
grace and providence of God, depend in a
considerable degree upon their education.
. . . Let us follow this section [of the Dis-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 79

cipline], and we shall meet many on the Day
of Judgment who will acknowledge before
the Great Judge, and an assembled universe,
that their first desires after Christ and salva-
tion were received in their younger years by
our instrumentality." With impassioned
eloquence they pleaded for the establish-
ment of Sabbath schools among the poor, as
well as among the competent. Out of that
prayer of Asbury and Coke came at last, if
all too slowly, the Sunday school movement
which is the crowning glory of present-day
Methodism.

The possibility of the splendid educational
equipment of the church of our time may
never have dawned upon the imagination
of Asbury; indeed, it has been questioned
whether the bishop was as alive to the educa-
tional as to the evangelistic needs and oppor-
tunities of the New World. After the burn-
ing of Cokesbur}^ College, which he had done
so much to foimd, he said; "The Lord called
not Whitefield and the Methodists to build
colleges. I wish only for schools. Dr. Coke
wanted colleges." Nevertheless, Bishop As-
huTj had more to do with the laying of the

80 FRANCIS ASBURY

foundation of our educational system than
Bishop Coke.

In that first Episcopal Address of 1789,
in speaking of the Discipline, the hishops
say, "We wish to see this little publication in
the house of eveiy Methodist, and the more
so as it contains our plan of collegiate and
Christian education." May we not say that
by Asbury's insistence upon the dissemina-
tion of Christian literature and his part in the
establishment of the Book Concern, with his
earnest activity in organizing district schools
and others of what may be called secondary,
or even primary education, he planted the
seed from which has sprung the golden har-
vest of our splendid seminaries, colleges, and
universities? If there have come times, such
as followed the burning of Cokesbury Col-
lege, when the cause of higher education has
seemed to decline among us, it has never
wholly expired, and by all the tokens of
the educational revival of the church to-day,
it can never again even decline, but must
grow on in universal influence and power
forever.

Not only by his influence in founding the

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 81

publishing interests of our church did As-
bury inaugurate a definite plan and system
for the relief of the necessitous cases in our
ministry, but by his sympathetic and con-
stant advocacy of the claims of the Preach-
ers' Fund he planted the germs which at the
close of a century are developing into the full
flower of the most generous provision for our
retired ministers that has ever honored the
Church of God. In an unpublished letter he
writes to a presiding elder, expressing the
hope that "the collection for the Preachers'
Fund will be noble, not less than the interest
of eight or ten thousand dollars." "If the
money is not wanted in the Maryland Con-
ference," he writes, "our poor Brethren upon
the lakes or awa}^ among the rocks of New
England will dispense with it." And so his
great heart took in the land from Georgia to
Maine, and from the Atlantic to beyond the
Alleghenies, and the trials, deprivations, and
hardships of the preachers were his own.
Bishop Asbury took a great interest in the
evangelizing of the Indians, and though his
hopes with regard to their Christian conver-
sion were never fully realized, we have in a

82 FRANCIS ASIU KY

letter wi-ittcn by Bishop Coke an intima-
tion of the character of this work. He
writes: "It gives me great pleasure to find by
the last letter of my very dear friend, Bishop
Asbury, that we are likely to have a work
among the poor Indians, those sons of Shem,
as our dear old father in the gospel calls
them." It may be doubted whether Meth-
odism has fully carried out the great plan
which Bishop Asbury had hoped to have per-
fected with regard to our mission to the In-
dians.

Our countr}^ owes a debt of gratitude to
Bishop Asbury which no monument of
marble or of bronze can ever fully acknowl-
edge even in our national capital. No
preacher, no statesman, no man of all our
country's history ever did so much to inau-
gurate the movement for the abolition of
slavery, as this humane bishop. When the
framers of the Constitution were divided
on the subject and dared not make a Con-
stitution in which the doctrine of equality,
freedom, and the inalienable rights of
all men as set forth in the Declaration of
Independence would be declared as funda-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 83

mental law; when Jefferson and Wash-
ington, though they abhorred slavery, did
not deem it good politics to take a firm
stand for its legal abolition. Bishop As-
bury ceased not to plead for the freedom of
the enslaved, and was as responsible as any or
as all others, for arraying Methodism and
the Methodist Disciphne against the evil
which threatened to disrupt the church and
the nation at their very origin. There were
slumbering in the church and the nation the
volcanic fires which in time were to shake
the social, economic, political and religious
foundation of America.

The original peace and harmony of our
early Methodism is a fiction ; it never existed ;
and the division of the church in 1844 and
1845 proved it. So the perfect and harmoni-
ous union of the States never existed in those
days following the adoption of the Constitu-
tion; and the Civil War proved it. But as
to-day, with all our sectional political animos-
ities buried in the graves of the blue and the
gray, we have the most perfect national
union the States have ever known, so very
soon, please God, with all our ecclesiastical

84 FRANCIS ASRITRY

animosities buried, with even the sad, harsh
memories thereof, in the graves of our noble
dead, both North and South, ]Methodism will
experience such a union and solidarity, such
a power and spiritual potency, and present
such an imposing, all-commanding, all-con-
quering front to the powers of sin and wrong
as she has never anticipated save in the
dreams of her prophets and the visions of
her seers. As the name of Washington will
ever draw the citizens of our country into a
happier and holier political brotherhood, so
the name of Asbury will be the name to unite,
and unite forever, all the forms of our glo-
rious Methodism.

Again, Bishop Asbury was one of the
mighty men whose life-long championship of
temperance helped to initiate that irresistible
movement, which for a century has been
gathering force and momentum and is now
rushing to the high tide of nation-wide pro-
hibition. Bishop Asbury, perhaps more
than any other one man, committed the
Methodist Episcopal Church to temperance,
total abstinence, and eternal enmity to the
liquor traffic. Not only was Asbury cham-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 85

pionin^ the cause of God, of the church, and
of humanity in his advocacy of temperance,
but his very loyalty to our country, his high-
minded patriotism urged him to leadership
in the crusade against strong drink. The
century-long battle which he did so much to
inaugurate is coming to the universal victory.
Nor did this gospel preacher and Method-
ist bishop hesitate to interest himself in the
political welfare of our country. When all
the other preachers who had come over from
England cut for home on the eve of the Revo-
lution, Francis Asbury stayed by the stuff.
He believed in the cause of our Revolution-
ary Fathers; he prophesied that their just
and righteous cause would win ; he could not,
he would not forsake the little Methodist
flock in their time of need and danger. He
had left his native land for the New World
and for the glory of Jesus Christ. With the
new land he had cast his lot. On one occa-
sion he wrote: "My dear mother is going
swiftly, if not gone, after praying fifty-five
years for me. I have often thought very seri-
ously of my leaving my mother as one of the
most doubtful sacrifices I have made." And

86 FRANCIS ASBURY

yet at any and all sacrifice he identified him-
self with the American Methodists and the
American Revolution.

By that he saved Methodism to the new
nation ; saved it when the attitude of Wesley
threatened to destroy it as an evangelizing
power in America. It w^as, therefore, the
right of such a man, such a patriot, and such
a saint to seek an audience with the most
august personage of the country and of the
age. At the suggestion of Bishop Asbur}'-
the Conference voted to present a congratu-
latory address to Washington on his inau-
guration as President of the United States.
Asbury and Coke were appointed to form-
ulate and present the address.

Hence, Asbur}^ notes in his diarj^ "We
waited on General Washington, who received
us very politely, and gave us his opinion
against slavery." Though Bishop Coke ac-
companied him in his visit to President
Washington, Bishop Asbury presented the
address in which he made a plea for freedom
and for the President's influence in the extir-
pation of slavery. Evidently, the great
frontier bishop was profoundly impressed by

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 87

the manner and sentiments of Washington.
He became a most devoted admirer of the
Father of his Country, and wrote: "The
longer I hve, and the more I investigate, the
more I apphiiid the uniform conduct of
President AVashington in all the important
stations which he has filled." The good
bishop received with profound sorrow the
intelhgence of the death of Washington. It
so unnerved him that he ceased from all work
and gave himself to sorrowful meditation and
to prayer. He wrote in those gloomy days of
universal mourning: "I am disposed to lose
sight of all but Washington. Matchless
man!" Asbury greatly rejoiced on hearing
that in his will the great Virginian, the great
patriot, the great Washington, manumitted
his slaves.

It is no matter for wonder that a bishop so
devoted to Washington and to the Revolu-
tionary cause should have won the esteem
and love of thousands of patriots, and been
able to set in motion the influences which
gained a better understanding, and even
awakened the popularity of the people called
Methodists.

88 FRANCIS ASBURY

Well known is the story of the travelings,
sufferings, and unparalleled aetivities of
Bishoji Asbury. To quote from Dr. Mains:
"It has been estimated that in his American
ministry he preached about sixteen thousand
five hundred sermons, and traveled about two
hundred and seventy thousand miles, six
thousand miles a year; that he presided in no
less than two hundred and twenty-four An-
nual Conferences, and ordained more than
four thousand preachers." Bachelor as he
was, he had no home where the devoted wife
and loving children greeted him on his return
from long and fatiguing journeys. He was
the pilgrim bishop without a home save in the
hearts of the thousands he had led to God.
In such financial straits did he often find him-
self, that on one occasion he wrote: "I have
served the church upward of twenty-five
years in Europe and America. All the prop-
erty I have gained is two old horses, the con-
stant companions of my toil, six if not seven
thousand miles every year." But he could
treat his poverty with a jest, as when he
wrote, "The superintendent bishop of the
Methodist Church in America being reduced

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 89

to two dollars, he was obliged to make his
wants known."

Bishop Asbury did not escape calumny,
but he ever treated his detractors with a dig-
nity and patience becoming a Christian
gentleman and a bishop of the Church of
God. He bore all buffetings, false accusa-
tions and persecutions with the stout heart
of a great man.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

March 31, 1816, at the age of seventy-one,
the homeless pilgrim, the frontier itinerant,
the weary toiler, the exhaustless giant, sinks
at last to rest. Before him has gone the great
missionary bishop, his beloved companion,
Coke; Whatcoat, too, the spiritual, saintly
bishop, has preceded him to the skies. Upon
McKendree, the eloquent, fiery, glorious Mc-
Kendree, falls the old prophet's mantle and
Bishop Asbury passes into glory and into
history.

FRANCIS ASBURY— ITINERANT

On a late October day in the year 1771,
while the sliip on which he had taken pas-
sage bore him steadily westward, a youth-
ful voyager, in quest of holy adventure in a
far-off land, put his own spirit to the test of
his inmost purpose. "Whither am I going?"
he exclaimed. "To the New World."
"What to do?" "To gain honor?" "No,
if I know my own heart." "To get money?"
"No," was the firm reply. "I am going to
live to God, and bring others so to do."

Not more conscious and definite was the
choice by which Pizarro became conqueror of
Peru. By like decision and dedication the
monk of Erfurt freed Christianity from me-
digeval bondage. It is not too much to say
that by his early determination, and not
merely in his later labors and achievements,
Francis Asbury, itinerant Methodist, became
one of the chief factors in forming the moral
character of America.

The year of the birth of this pioneer of the
cross, hero of the wilderness, molder of civic
manners, and Christian statesman, 174.5, was

90

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 91

during the earlier days of the evangehcal re-
vival in. England. More than a decade yet
remained before the period of riots and of
violence which blazed the pathway of Wesley
and his followers would be concluded. It
was the age of Swift and Smollett, of Hume
and Bolingbroke. On the continent Rous-
seau and Voltaire were poison in the veins of
the social body. Church and state were alike
preyed upon by the irreverent and the mer-
cenary. It was also the year of the attempt
of Charles Stuart to regain for his family the
British throne.

In August, the month of Asbury's birth,
after the Conference session at Bristol, John
Wesley went to Newcastle, then in peril
from the north, and there remained to com-
fort the Methodist flock, whose house of wor-
ship, being without the city walls, was be-
lieved to be in danger of destruction, a fate
which happily did not arrive. Like his Lord,
Francis Asbury was the son of a humble
man named Joseph, not a carpenter, but a
farmer and gardener. His mother, Eliza-
beth, a book-loving, fair-minded, and devout
woman, when her son, a lad of tender jeavs,

02 FRANCIS ASBURY

asked lier about the Methodists, gave him a
good account of them. He sought their serv-
ices, and became deeply impressed. At the
age of thirteen he was converted. The best
converts are the children.

At sixteen the boy Francis became a local
preacher, exercising his gifts first in his own
father's house. At the Conference of 1767,
held in the month of his twenty-second birth-
day, he was received by the leader of his
church into the itinerant ministry. After
four years of service in the homeland, at the
Conference of 1771 the warm heart of the
youth was stirred by the appeal of Mr. Wes-
ley. "Our brethren in America call aloud
for help. Who are willing to go over and
help them?" Five felt called: two, Asbury
and Richard Wright, were chosen. Asbury
returned home, and bade farewell to his par-
ents, who were deeply attached to their only
child, from whom later they received affec-
tionate letters and from his slender resources
generous sums for their support in advancing
years.

With especial sadness he parted from a
dearly loved mother, upon whom, in this life.

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 93

his eyes were never again to look. Friendly
Methodists of Bristol fitted him out with ten
pounds in money and a suit of clothes, mak-
ing thereby one of the best possible invest-
ments, and becoming partners of God in a
mighty business. The fellow missionaries set
sail from the old port of Pill, a tempting
name to one describing a departure. As yet
Francis Asbury had given so little sign of
coming greatness that Mr. Green has said,
"No one could foresee that one of these two,
a young man of six and twent}^ summers, tall
in person, grave in demeanor, was destined
to become an apostle whose labors would
equal those of any servant of the cross whose
name is inscribed on the rolls of the church,
since the apostolic age." No one foresee all
this ? Not man, perchance !

But is there not One who from the begin-
ning marks with unerring accuracy the man
of his knowledge and of his choice, and who
brings to noble issues the lives of those who
are obedient to his will? We believe in the
foreknowledge of God, in the election of
those whom the Almighty would make the
instruments of his plans, and in the master

94, FRANCIS ASBUUY

workmanship b}' wliich they are shaped and
fitted to their tasks who are wilhng to be used
by him.

A stormy passage to America; throes
upon the sea were not a bad preparation for
trials and upheavals ui:)on the land! Fifty
nights of sleeping between two blankets on
the hard deck must have reminded Asbury
of Weslej^'s wellknown remark to John
Nelson after three weeks lodging on the floor
during one of their preaching trips: "Brother
Nelson, let us be of good cheer; I have one
whole side yet, for the skin is off but one
side."

Fifty days of reading, meditation, prayer-
fulness, and of faithful preaching to sailors
and to shipmates! Would that Methodism
might return to the habit of its zealous
fathers, who took all men for their congre-
gation, and found pulpits readily. Leaning
sometimes against the swa^dng mast, while
he proclaimed the truth, Francis Asbur}^
was not less fitly supported for his office than
if he had steadied himself by aid of a richly
carved and costly desk, and his experience
proved that men are men and in need of the

CENTEXXIAL ADDRESSES 9,;

gospel of Christ, everywhere, in cliurch and
out of it, on ocean, or on shore.

At the end of their voyage Joseph Pilmoor
and the httle society at Philadelphia met
Asbury and Wright with the utmost good
w^ill. "The people," he wrote, "looked on
us with pleasure, bidding us w^elcome with
fervent affection, and receiving us as angels
of God." They preached in the large church,
then separated, Wright to Bohemia Manor,
Maryland; Asbury to New York by way of
the Jerseys, where he stopped to preach in
the courthouse in Burlington. At Staten
Island, three sermons, delivered in the home
of Peter Van Pelt, laid the foundations of
permanent work.

At Wesley Chapel, John Street, he took
for his theme the apostolic declaration, which
his own career so well exemplified, "I am de-
termined not to know anything among }' ou,
save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." His
words were powerful, and he was himself
moved by the effect which they produced
upon the whole audience, including a consid-
erable number of Negroes, who seemed espe-
ciallv affected. Everywhere such attention

96 FRANCIS ASBURY

was given his message that he was led to
write, "1 think the Americans more ready to
receive the word than the Enghsh." From
the first, Asbury took the New World to his
heart, just as every ambassador of Christ to
any community ought to do. Tlie man who
does not identify himself with his constitu-
ency lacks leverage, and possesses relatively
little power to move the mass.

Entrance upon an untried field of labor is
certain to be attended with some form of
temptation and trial. The young itinerant
suffered much from the cold and exposure of
his first Northern winter, which, however, did
not chill his ardor, nor prevent relentless
activity. Many towns in the region of New
York were evangelized. The life of the so-
cieties was quickened, converts were made,
and new classes organized. The undisci-
plined condition of much of the work, espe-
cially in the cities, was a grievous problem
to one trained under the personal influence
of John Wesle3^ At the very outset Asbury
criticized this laxity, and set himself to its
correction. He aroused opposition, but as
his acquaintance and authority increased, his

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 97

insistence upon regularity became more in-
fluential. The day after certain "sharp de-
bates" had taken place at John Street, a
letter came from Wesley requiring "a strict
attention to Discipline," and making the
courageous administrator of the rules "his
assistant," and thus the virtual head of the
American societies. Nor can it be doubted
that this recognition was wise.

Moreover, the correction of lax methods
of life and service proved to be of lasting
value to Methodism. Even in this later day
there are some who believe that loyal admin-
istration and observance of Discipline, not
in matters of "mint, anise, and cummin," too
often and too ofliciously tithed, but in
"weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy,
and faith," would strengthen the body of
Christ, and tend to enlarge the borders of his
kingdom. It is a false philosophy which
holds that adherence to moral principle, and
to high standards of Christian character and
conduct, injures the church and restricts
its opportimities. Whatever may be the
temporary effect of just and wholesome re-
straints, it is the church that governs its peo-

98 FRANCIS ASEURY

pie thai has many people to <^'overn, while,
as a rule, religious organizations of loose re-
quirements have loose affiliations, and draw
little upon the world. A shrewd old farmer
once wisely observed, "I've alius noticed that
when you let down the bars there's more
critters want to git out than want to git in."

"While I stay," said Asbury, "the Rules
must be attended to. I cannot suffer myself
to be guided by half-hearted Methodists."
He was no less fixed upon "the Methodist
plan" of an itinerant ministry. He sought
— how strangely this affects the mind — "a
circulation of preachers, to avoid partiahty
and popularity." He resisted the pressure
of those who would gladly have made him, as
a brilliant young preacher, their permanent
pastor. He succeeded in securing for a con-
siderable time a succession in appointments
everj^ six months.

Methodism has long since been compelled
to adapt itself to the needs of settled com-
munities and of complex conditions. But,
however unavoidable and necessarj^ this
change, it must not be pressed too far. Is it
not a most unmethodistic and indefensible

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 99

partiality which separates preachers of the
gospel into "grades," of which we hear so
much, especially when the classification is
based upon salaries received? As to popu-
larity, how can it be avoided? How indeed,
unless to a reasonable degree by a little
greater fidelity to Christ and to the needs of
his people. But who wishes to escape popu-
larity, or regards himself in danger of the
Master's "Woe, when all men shall speak
well of you"?

Now began a period of constant and cour-
ageous travels from New York to Philadel-
phia, Baltimore, and Virginia. Like a flame
of fire Asbury swept through the colonies,
preaching, visiting the sick and the sinful,
organizing, establishing, guiding the work
of God. He was too strenuous. Most men
belong to one of two classes, those who get
tired and rest, and those who rest before they
get tired. Francis Asbury belonged to a
third and rare group of tireless toilers, with
whom those of less energy cannot keep pace,
and who sometimes arouse the impatience of
those less consecrated. No wonder com-
plaints went to England, and that in 1773

78907

100 FRANCIS A8EURY

Thomas Rankin was appointed and sent to
America as general assistant, not to supplant
his younger associate, but to bring to his aid
the wisdom and balance of riper experience.
The result might have been wholesome had it
not been for the inability of Rankin to adapt
himself to the American character. Political
conditions were now unsettled. Revolution
was impending.

In 1773 the first Conference was held by
the Methodist societies, which were thence-
forward more closely bound together. As-
bury became chief preacher on Baltimore
circuit, and met his twenty-four appoint-
ments regularly, in one year doubling the
membership, building five chapels, and open-
ing so many new preaching places that four
circuits had to be created from the territory.
The next year he spent in New York and
Philadelphia, and then returned to Balti-
more, where he received news of the affair
at Concord between the men of Massachu-
setts and the royal troops. Though he was
English born, this event did not cause As-
bury to lose his poise, or give voice to any
hasty word. "Surely," said he, "the Lord

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 101

will overrule, and make all these things sub-
servient to the spiritual welfare of his
church." He had learned higher patriotism
than that of native land, and devoting him-
self not to an earthly but to a heavenly King,
proceeded to his labors in Virginia, where a
letter from Rankin informed him that he
with others "had deliberately concluded to
return to England."

Not so the mind of Francis Asbury. He
had become naturalized and Americanized.
"I am determined," he replied, "not to leave,
let the consequence be what it may." All
the other English preachers recrossed the
sea, but Asbury remained at his post. At
first suspected of disloyalty, once arrested,
once shot at, confined for a period to the
home of his friend. Judge White, of Dela-
ware, and at another time forced to take
refuge in the swamps, he made good use of
all opportunities for advancing the interests
of Methodism. When proofs of his fidelity
to his adopted land fell into the hands of
American officers, he took advantage of their
marked change of attitude to increase his
activities.

102 FRANCIS ASBUKY

The period from 1777 to 1781 was char-
acterized not only by pohtical agitation, but
by controversy within the young societies
over the right of its preachers to administer
the sacraments. The now assured leader-
ship and preeminence of Asbury bore the
test of this season of difficulty. The work
went on effectively until the Conference of
1784 witnessed the formation of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church, in which Coke and
Asbury ordained elders for the full offices of
Christian ministry.

The itinerant labors of Asbury really
lasted all his lifetime, for in the highest office
he was still an itinerant. In all he traveled
more than two hundred and seventy thousand
miles, and preached more than sixteen thou-
sand sermons. Afoot and on horse back or
by slow and lumbering carts and carriages,
he ventured through forests, across plains,
and over mountains, north and west and
south, making acquaintance of every settle-
ment from Boston to Georgia, and from the
seaboard to the wilds of Ohio.

Sorely afflicted, and often temporarily in-
capacitated for service by malaria, rheuma-

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 103

tism, and neuralgia, he pressed forward in
a path which meant exposure to storm and
cold, sleeping in unsanitary cabins and under
the open skies, and preaching when chilled
by wintry winds, or burning with fever.
Nothing could conquer his passion as an
apostle of Christ, or lead him to betray weak-
ness in the face of duty. He fearlessly at-
tacked the evils of his time, including slavery.

His early education was meager, for a rea-
son which must awaken painful memory in
some minds, "a horrible dread," to use his
own term, of the schoolmaster's birch. Yet
he became a great student and a college
founder. As he traveled he read. It is a
marvelous list of books which are cited in his
Journal. He studied even Hebrew on horse-
back, and he became proficient in the original
languages of the Bible and in the best liter-
ature.

Unlike Wesley, Francis Asbury lived in a
state of single wretchedness. How could he
do otherwise when traveling almost con-
stantly, and living on a salary of eighty
dollars a year, which until long past middle
hfe it was necessary to share with his par-

104 FRANCIS ASBURY

ents? Asbury was true to his fellow itiner-
ants, and he refused, even on the appoint-
ment of Wesley himself, to accept a bish-
opric, unless elected thereto by the votes of
his brother elders. Tluis he gave to Method-
ism what it does well to guard, as well as
prize, a democratic episcopacy.

I will not compare Francis Asbur^^ with
John Wesley. The two are incomparable,
and equally praiseworthy. Rather let us
think of the American Francis in conjunc-
tion with his European namesakes of eccle-
siastical history. Francis de Sales converted
Calvinists to Rome; Francis Asbury brought
sinners to Christ. Francis Xavier was a
flaming apostle to the cross ; Francis Asbury
w^as not only a missionaiy, but an organizer
and a builder. Francis of Assisi was poor
and pious ; Francis Asbury was poor, pious,
and no dreamer of impracticable dreams, nor
purveyor of superstitions, however poetical.
The best qualities of the Roman Saints
Francis were in the sturdy Protestant, and
he surpassed them all in sanity of mind and
in constructive statesmanship.

More than anv other it w^as this unselfish,

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 105

noble man, whose character and attainments
would have fitted him to shine in any profes-
sion or service, who fashioned the institu-
tions of American Methodism, and of its far
flung branches, and who made its itinerancy-
one of the creative powers of the world. In
the United States of America he is deserv-
edly honored. If this nation is in any wise
indebted to Episcopal Methodism for social
and civic services and achievements, as un-
biased students of history declare, then
America owes a high tribute of praise to the
chief itinerant preacher of this church.

Francis Asbury belongs to all Methodism,
and all Methodism belongs to him. In Sa-
vannah, before the tablet which marks the
spot whereon John Wesley delivered his first
sermon in America, I could but think that
Methodism is one in Wesley. In the Mo-
hawk valley of New York and again upon
the fields and beside the rivers of Georgia,
my thought has been, "Here trod the feet of
another mighty leader to whom all branches
of Methodism point with the pride of owner-
ship." And the prayer has often risen to my
lips, "In God's good time and way, may

106 FRANCIS ASBURY

Methodism be brought into an Asburian
unity of S2)irit and of fellowship in wliicli
without restriction, losses, or embarrassments
of any kind, Xorth may again join hands
with South, w^hile East and West bless the
bans, and as filial offspring enter into the
sacred relations of a united and a happy f am-

iiy."

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REFERENCE DEPARTMENT

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'SEP 1 7 1917